Joker: A Work of Art, In A Frame
One of the many possible readings of the Todd Philips film titled Joker is that it delivers a scathing critique, indeed an apocalyptic dystopia, of the world closing in on the film's main character as he gradually gets out of control. A defining aspect of the storyline--I'm trying to relate this without spoilers--is that Joker is really, only acting for himself. Arguably his only motive is to find and try to save, to the extent possible given his ever worsening conditions mental, "economic" and social--himself as an individual. (Perhaps the creators of the film did this because they can't think of a social cause this character could "represent." Or because they can't think of a social cause, period. Or perhaps they did the math and concluded that any recognizable social cause would make the plot liable to be labeled "political"--something that might adversely affect the "bottom line." Or, who knows, they are working a tacit Lukácsian Marxist notion of alienation not only in terms of depicting the increasingly unbearable, fateful loneliness of the protagonist, but also in foregrounding the obstacles late modernity poses to the formation of collective subjectivities as such.) Whatever the reason, Arthur--the Joker--repeatedly pronounces that he is only interested in his own concerns. He seeks, and ostensibly achieves, his own redemption with people who had wronged him.
The social world of course "comes in," not only in the unintended political consequences of Arthur's actions that serve as background to Arthur's story, but also in Arthur's brief "main-character-explains-the-message-of-the-film-to-that-part-of-the-audience-that-is-not-yet-with-the-program" monologue, (a depressing Hollywood tradition): "What do you get when you mix a mentally ill loner with a society that does not care about him?"
Not exactly a sharply focused program for political action, now, is it.
The farthest the story line is allowing itself to go in terms of delineating any specific object that seems to be a problem--beyond "society", for chrissakes. . .--as it draws the viewer more and more into Arthur's predicament and perspective:
the "rich."
For anyone who has given more than half a thought to modern capitalism--or has taken any of my numerous Classical Sociology classes ;) --it is amply clear that this is
Joker played in one of the art cinemas of Warsaw (where I find myself for the moment) for exactly one week. We missed it there. After that, the film smoothly proceeded into the hands of the cultural body snatchers, a company also known as Cinema City--actually, no, nothing so modest. . . correction: CINEMA CITY. In full CAPITAL letters (pun intended). The particular CINEMA CITY we went to is in a shopping mall located in the middle of one of the socialist era housing areas that skirt Warsaw. About 35 minutes' ride on a tram from downtown.
The building is slightly set off from a major street intersection. It features one entrance for visitors who did not come by automobile (all other entrances / exits are to/from the parking lot that takes up about half of the volume of the building). The interior has no recognizable shape that would allow visitors to orient themselves. This is man-made maze, designed for maximum "commercial contact." There is no signage for the movie theatre, almost anywhere. You arrive in the mall and you spend another 15-20 minutes wading through thickets of pseudo-attractive, big-label commodities, most of which is totally unrelated to the lives of the people whose public space it is located in the middle of. Little surprise, almost nobody is buying any of the depressing, overpriced "items." High-school-age kids sprinkle the scene (it's already chilly in Warsaw, inside it's nicer), munching on ice cream, hot dogs, etc. The view is every bit as depressing as the shopping malls in central New Jersey, Los Angeles, Budapest, Moscow, the Global South--and everywhere else I have come across them.
The movie theater--pardon me, CINEMA CITY--is a multiplex tucked away in the farthest corner of the top floor of the mall. There is a queue of about fifty people waiting for their tickets. Of the 6 ticket counters, only 3 work. Forget about he concessions stand, there's an even longer line there -- no hope for a bottle of water.
At last the auditorium. We just made it by showtime.
And what the audience gets at that point is commercials. More precisely, a 25-minute ordeal of commercials, blasted at us at excruciatingly high volume. I never even thought there was such high volume in movie theaters. I wonder what the point is. Did somebody actually teach the geniuses who design and run these theaters that people are more likely to buy stuff they don't need if they are told to do so AT AN EXCRUCIATINGLY LOUD VOLUME? The first batch of commercials advertises goods blandly unrelated to the place we are at. The last three are at least about upcoming "attractions." Each of the trailers of the "attractions" features in-your-face, wildly fast-paced images AND LOUD SOUNDS of disasters, accidents and, most prevalent, unreal, gory violence. The last 7-8 minutes of the commercials before Joker is nothing but sheer, un-adulterated visual and audial torture.
And that is when Joker begins.
Georg Simmel began his essay on "The Picture Frame," written a good century ago, with this observation:
"The character of things depends ultimately whether they are wholes or parts. [. . .] The essence of the work of art, however, is to be a whole for itself, not requiring any relation to an exterior, spinning each of its threads back into its own centre. [. . .] Thus its boundaries mean something quite different from what one calls boundaries in a natural entity. [The frame of a work of art] excludes all that surrounds it, and thus also the viewer as well, from the work of art, and thereby helps to place it at that distance from which alone it is aesthetically enjoyable. [. . .] The qualities of the picture frame reveal themselves to be those of assisting and giving meaning to this inner unity of the picture."
Simmel concludes,
"The work of art is in the actually contradictory position of being supposed to form a unified whole with its surroundings, whereas it is itself already a whole. In this way it repeats the general difficulty of life that the elements of totalities nevertheless lay claim to being autonomous totalities.""
The physical distance from downtown, the gross alienation of the commodity as it acts as if it could celebrate itself, concealing that it can't, in the low-energy, emotionally empty and tired space of the shopping plaza, the subjection of the audience to the mild humiliation of the gasoline line for the tickets, the violence OF, no less the violence IN the commercial messages showered on an audience that went to the room for an entirely different experience--Joker's frame indeed invites in, and divides us from, the work of art as work of art.
The social world of course "comes in," not only in the unintended political consequences of Arthur's actions that serve as background to Arthur's story, but also in Arthur's brief "main-character-explains-the-message-of-the-film-to-that-part-of-the-audience-that-is-not-yet-with-the-program" monologue, (a depressing Hollywood tradition): "What do you get when you mix a mentally ill loner with a society that does not care about him?"
Not exactly a sharply focused program for political action, now, is it.
The farthest the story line is allowing itself to go in terms of delineating any specific object that seems to be a problem--beyond "society", for chrissakes. . .--as it draws the viewer more and more into Arthur's predicament and perspective:
the "rich."
For anyone who has given more than half a thought to modern capitalism--or has taken any of my numerous Classical Sociology classes ;) --it is amply clear that this is
- individual action directed against
- other individuals who are, well,
- "rich."
Joker played in one of the art cinemas of Warsaw (where I find myself for the moment) for exactly one week. We missed it there. After that, the film smoothly proceeded into the hands of the cultural body snatchers, a company also known as Cinema City--actually, no, nothing so modest. . . correction: CINEMA CITY. In full CAPITAL letters (pun intended). The particular CINEMA CITY we went to is in a shopping mall located in the middle of one of the socialist era housing areas that skirt Warsaw. About 35 minutes' ride on a tram from downtown.
The building is slightly set off from a major street intersection. It features one entrance for visitors who did not come by automobile (all other entrances / exits are to/from the parking lot that takes up about half of the volume of the building). The interior has no recognizable shape that would allow visitors to orient themselves. This is man-made maze, designed for maximum "commercial contact." There is no signage for the movie theatre, almost anywhere. You arrive in the mall and you spend another 15-20 minutes wading through thickets of pseudo-attractive, big-label commodities, most of which is totally unrelated to the lives of the people whose public space it is located in the middle of. Little surprise, almost nobody is buying any of the depressing, overpriced "items." High-school-age kids sprinkle the scene (it's already chilly in Warsaw, inside it's nicer), munching on ice cream, hot dogs, etc. The view is every bit as depressing as the shopping malls in central New Jersey, Los Angeles, Budapest, Moscow, the Global South--and everywhere else I have come across them.
The movie theater--pardon me, CINEMA CITY--is a multiplex tucked away in the farthest corner of the top floor of the mall. There is a queue of about fifty people waiting for their tickets. Of the 6 ticket counters, only 3 work. Forget about he concessions stand, there's an even longer line there -- no hope for a bottle of water.
At last the auditorium. We just made it by showtime.
And what the audience gets at that point is commercials. More precisely, a 25-minute ordeal of commercials, blasted at us at excruciatingly high volume. I never even thought there was such high volume in movie theaters. I wonder what the point is. Did somebody actually teach the geniuses who design and run these theaters that people are more likely to buy stuff they don't need if they are told to do so AT AN EXCRUCIATINGLY LOUD VOLUME? The first batch of commercials advertises goods blandly unrelated to the place we are at. The last three are at least about upcoming "attractions." Each of the trailers of the "attractions" features in-your-face, wildly fast-paced images AND LOUD SOUNDS of disasters, accidents and, most prevalent, unreal, gory violence. The last 7-8 minutes of the commercials before Joker is nothing but sheer, un-adulterated visual and audial torture.
And that is when Joker begins.
Georg Simmel began his essay on "The Picture Frame," written a good century ago, with this observation:
"The character of things depends ultimately whether they are wholes or parts. [. . .] The essence of the work of art, however, is to be a whole for itself, not requiring any relation to an exterior, spinning each of its threads back into its own centre. [. . .] Thus its boundaries mean something quite different from what one calls boundaries in a natural entity. [The frame of a work of art] excludes all that surrounds it, and thus also the viewer as well, from the work of art, and thereby helps to place it at that distance from which alone it is aesthetically enjoyable. [. . .] The qualities of the picture frame reveal themselves to be those of assisting and giving meaning to this inner unity of the picture."
Simmel concludes,
"The work of art is in the actually contradictory position of being supposed to form a unified whole with its surroundings, whereas it is itself already a whole. In this way it repeats the general difficulty of life that the elements of totalities nevertheless lay claim to being autonomous totalities.""
The physical distance from downtown, the gross alienation of the commodity as it acts as if it could celebrate itself, concealing that it can't, in the low-energy, emotionally empty and tired space of the shopping plaza, the subjection of the audience to the mild humiliation of the gasoline line for the tickets, the violence OF, no less the violence IN the commercial messages showered on an audience that went to the room for an entirely different experience--Joker's frame indeed invites in, and divides us from, the work of art as work of art.
Comments
Post a Comment